Dwarves, elves and men band together to secure the future of Middle-earth in the final installment of Peter Jackson’s ‘Hobbit’ trilogy

Watch a clip from the film "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies," starring Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage. Photo/Video: Warner Bros.

The best way I know to give “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” the heartfelt praise it deserves is to acknowledge that I’m anything but a scholar in this field. As a late arrival to the J.R.R. Tolkien canon, I tried my best to keep track of all the characters, intricacies, symbols, nuances, layers and interconnections in Peter Jackson’s Tolkien films, but it wasn’t easy. Still, experiencing these spectacles has become increasingly pleasurable, except for the first Hobbit installment, “An Unexpected Journey,” which was burdened by obligatory introductions of characters and struggles to come. Now, thanks to this last film, in 3-D, the pleasure is intense, and mixed with awe. There is majesty here, and not just because we’re in the presence of magnificently regal madness.

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The awe begins when the movie begins, with the shock of seeing the dragon Smaug soaring over Lake-town like a jumbo jet, then laying waste to whole neighborhoods with a breath as deadly as napalm. (As in the previous film, the voice of Smaug was provided, before subsequent digital fiddling, by Benedict Cumberbatch.) The dragon is, of course, born of bits and bytes. The same goes for the contending armies of this climactic tale, in which the races of dwarves, elves and men must unite against a common enemy if Middle-earth is to have a future. Indeed, much of “The Battle of the Five Armies,” like the films that preceded it, could qualify as an animated feature, but that magnifies the awe, rather than diminishes it as in the case of so many middling attractions that depend on mediocre technology. The computer-generated effects here are executed so gorgeously—my favorite is a battle on the ice—and intertwined with such stirring live action, that the film as a whole is seamless, quite astonishing and deeply satisfying.

The most commanding figure is Richard Armitage’s Dwarf King-In-Waiting, Thorin Oakenshield. Thorin is, to put it mildly, less concerned with kingness than thingness. A vast subterranean treasure trove has driven him so thoroughly and passionately mad—the specific diagnosis is “dragon sickness,” or attraction to gold—that he can’t be concerned with the future, let alone with pulling together an alliance that will stabilize the present. This treasure, he declares, “is worth all the blood we can spend.”

One of the signal achievements of Mr. Jackson and his myriad colleagues in this film is maintaining not only a sense of momentousness but of individual purpose, crisis and tragedy. Martin Freeman’s Bilbo Baggins, touching as ever, is an observer of Thorin’s madness, up to a point; when he finally intercedes, it’s with courage and thrilling clarity. Other stalwarts of the series are present and vividly accounted for: Ian McKellen’s Gandalf; Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel, Orlando Bloom’s Legolas, Evangeline Lilly’s Tauriel and, especially moving for devotees of genre films, Christopher Lee’s Saruman. The six films in Mr. Jackson’s two trilogies have come to constitute a genre unto itself—peerless fantasy, flawlessly rendered.

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‘The Lord Of the Rings: The Return Of the King’ (2003)

“Show us the meaning of haste,” the white wizard Gandalf tells his white stallion Shadowfax as they gallop off to one of the many enthralling encounters in the cycle’s third and climactic film. Haste is a relative thing when it comes to a battle-heavy production with multiple endings that’s 200 minutes long. Yet it isn’t a crucial thing, for the invisible wizard Peter Jackson makes use of every scene to show us the meaning of magnificence. Never has a filmmaker aimed higher, or achieved more.